Posted on 09/22/2006 2:09:33 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Free Republic is currently running a poll on this subject:
Do you think creationism or intelligent design should be taught in science classes in secondary public schools as a competing scientific theory to evolution?You can find the poll at the bottom of your "self search" page, also titled "My Comments," where you go to look for posts you've received.
I don't know what effect -- if any -- the poll will have on the future of this website's science threads. But it's certainly worth while to know the general attitude of the people who frequent this website.
Science isn't a democracy, and the value of scientific theories isn't something that's voted upon. The outcome of this poll won't have any scientific importance. But the poll is important because this is a political website. How we decide to educate our children is a very important issue. It's also important whether the political parties decide to take a position on this. (I don't think they should, but it may be happening anyway.)
If you have an opinion on this subject, go ahead and vote.
Gullible.
you can't put anything up against it
There's that habitual ASSUMING again.
Can't and WON'T are different words with different meanings.
Chronic assumptions about me may match the chronically poor assumptions about evolution in their poorness
but are similarly unimpressive.
Gullible.
= = = =
More evolutionists cheekiness, it appears to me.
. . . as well as haughtiness, arrogance, smugness, self-righteousness . . .
really admirable scientific qualities, those.
This issue won't impact the outcome of any race, either way. Maybe local school boards.
FWIW b_sharp, I am using the word "faith" in precisely the same sense intended by Pope Benedict XVI in his recent, highly controversial Regensburg Inaugural Address. And I find the reaction I'm getting around here from certain quarters to this usage is eerily similar to the reaction the speech got from certain quarters of the Islamist world.
I'll stick by my usage as the fundamental one. Not least because the Pope does -- who is an extraordinarily brilliant metaphysician and epistemologist as well as superb theologian.
My use of the word "faith" is not "equivocal." It is essential.
In another post (to which I cannot seem to respond for whatever reason, since I "time out" on every attempt), PatrickHenry took issue with my assertion that Western science has roots in classical antiquity and the Judeo-Christian tradition. In essence, his argument went: the classical Greeks were the first scientists, but Judeo-Christianity is superfluous to science. If you don't mind I'll reply to him here.
I would only like to point out here that Christianity is a synthesis of both the patriarchs and prophets of Israel and the great Greek metaphysicians, principally Plato and Aristotle. The term Logos is a Greek word denoting both "word" and "reason." We find it in the very first line of the Gospel of Saint John: "In the beginning was the Logos; and the Logos was God, and was with God." For the great Greeks, man was "microcosm" -- an image or reflection of the Cosmos itself. Christianity upped the stakes to another category altogether: Man is made in the image of God Himself, the Way and Truth, Who expresses Himself as the Logos, as the reason, or intellect, that constitutes the order of universal reality. Intelligent beings made in his image are therefore able, via the gifts of reason and free will, to "penetrate the mysteries" of the universe.
It is this very Christian understanding that gives science its confidence in its ability to perform its task. That the universe is intelligible and therefore knowable owes preeminently to the divine Logos from which it received its origin. Both classical metaphysics and Christian theology regard the universe as shot thought with reason, as ordered by intellect from the beginning; therefore the universe is intelligible to intelligent beings.
There is absolutely no similar statement regarding the essential constitution of the universe emanating from Eastern cultures at all. And arguably, that is the reason why they could not produce science -- though their arts and literatures are pretty amazing.
In short, in the West, faith and reason are inseparable; and the acknowledgement of this is what has made Western culture and civilization so extraordinarily, even uniquely, successful....
Not maybe, for sure! It already cost a bunch of school board members their jobs last year. It's becoming a major issue at the state level in several places, including Ohio.
This "narrow" issue of what to teach in secondary schools is the only aspect of the crevo debate that has any actual policy implications.
Lovely, comparing us angry Islamist radicals.
Most, if not all, state constitutions have a similar restriction.
Yeah, sure, spunketts: The components of a machine can be all noted, along with their configuration. But to know all that provides no basis of explanation for the machine when it is actually working. And that, I imagine, is Bohr's point.
You wrote:
A simple thought experiment, where the components are assembled mentally into the same configuration, results in an object that can only be found to be identical to the original. Thus it is the same life as the original. Bohr should have noted that his dissection was reversible.All I can say by way of reply to this is, the second law of thermodynamics rules out "reversibility" in such a case. You can do it as a thought experiment; but you can't do it "in the real world."
Bohr is an enormously subtle (some would say frustrating) thinker. I find him enormously challenging, and consider his scientific epistemology -- summed up under the principle of complementarity -- revolutionary, not to mention just what the human mind needs right now to "break the gridlock" of doctrinal thinking, scientific, philosophical, and theological.
Thanks so much for writing, spunketts!
Nice chatting with you.
I assume we agree on that point. And also that the Greeks I mentioned were pagans.
... but Judeo-Christianity is superfluous to science.
I didn't say that. Or anything remotely like that. But I'm still wild about you, BB!
And make it 90% instead of 56%? The DUmmies love this; I don't think you appreciate just how horrid this kind of crap makes conservatives look, and how many votes it removes from the GOP column.
Tell the former dover school board members who were voted out of office after bringing "shame and disrepute" (boiler plate from an impeachment bill of particulars) to their community.
The lawsuit was filed by the parents, BTW.
Good grief!!! What can I say but evidently you have a hyperactive imagination that is logically untethered from the text on which you are commenting?
If you disagree with that statement Liberal Classic, please 'splain to me where I went wrong....
Yes Coyoteman. And so do critics. What's your point?
f.Christian is that you?
Which part of the words are you having problems with?
Your screaming "it ain't so" isn't helpful for me to help you understand.
Just tell me which part of TToE you think you have a scientific alternative for. Once I see your scientific, peer reviewed proof I will provide a response.
Pretty simple. Either you have an alternative or you don't.
In this thread you connect Hitler and fascism to Charles Darwin.
Babbling and bloviating placemarker.
"Hmmmmm. Sounds like science to me. "
Sounds to me like because you don't regard what the vast majority of scientists consider to be evidence for Evolution to be 'real' evidence it can't possibly be evidence.
That betrays your true disdain of scientists and attempt to place yourself above those scientists.
What is it about your knowledge level and skill set that could convince us that you really do know more about Evolution and what is considered evidence than all of the tens of thousands of scientists that work in related fields?
Surely if you disagree so completely with those scientists either they are correct or you are correct. Please give us some insight as to why you are correct and they are not.
Jeepers!!! I already told you it was a translation of a quote, not a "quote" in the sense you mean! And that's why I put the [English] translation of the [Latin] passage into quotation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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